D.A. hopes to try alleged Seal Beach Salon shooter by the end of the year

SANTA ANA - The man charged with killing eight people at a Seal Beach hair salon was arraigned Wednesday on a grand jury indictment - a move designed to speed the judicial process.

Attorneys say they hope the indictment will provide closure for the survivors and victims' families.

"I'm hoping to get this case to trial in about a year," Deputy District Attorney Tony Rackauckas said. "We want to get it out of the way for the survivors and for the victims' families so we can have justice at the earliest possible time."

The county's top prosecutor - speaking to a throng of news media who attended the hearing - personally handled Wednesday's arraignment for Scott Dekraai, 42, of Huntington Beach.

Dekraai, appearing thinner and older since his last court appearance in November, spoke only to his attorneys during the brief arraignment. Dekraai's face was gaunt, and his hair was long and gray.

The arraignment was fairly routine, but there was some legal wrangling over selection of the judge that will hear the death penalty case.

Dekraai's primary defense attorney, Scott Sanders, used his one chance to challenge the first judge assigned to the case, Francisco Briseno - the county's longest standing jurist. Rackauckas, meanwhile, challenged the second judge, Richard Toohey, selected by the arraignment court.

The case was ultimately assigned to Orange County Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals.

Rackauckas said his office pursued the indictment after the defense announced how long it would take them to prepare for a preliminary hearing.

The indictment removes the need for a preliminary hearing, which means the case could come to trial within a year, the prosecutor said.

The trial itself could take up to three months, he said.

"It could have taken ... three years" to get to a trial under the more common method of a criminal filing, the DA said.

As he spoke, more than a dozen family members of victims killed in the melee at Salon Meritage stood behind Rackauckas.

Several said they were happy to hear of the indictment and vowed to attend every court hearing, as they have since Dekraai's first arraignment just days after the slayings.

"We wanted to be here for our family members, who couldn't be here," said Chelsea Huff, the daughter of Michelle Fournier, one of the eight people killed in the shooting. "We're here to take a stand to show that these people were loved and they need to be remembered properly."

Dekraai is accused of storming the salon, located in the 500 block of Pacific Coast Highway in Seal Beach, following an argument he had on the phone with Fournier, his ex-wife.

He had just lost a bid to get sole custody of their 8-year-old son, and was reportedly angry with Fournier and her friends and co-workers who supported her, police and prosecutors charge.

Fournier, 48, of Los Alamitos, was among nine people shot and she was one of the eight people who died, making it the worst mass killing in Orange County history.

About 15 people were inside the salon when Dekraai allegedly walked in clad in body armor and armed with three handguns. Several survived by running out of the business, hiding in small rooms or playing dead on the floor.

Dekraai is being held without bail at the Orange County Jail.

He is scheduled to return to the Santa Ana courthouse on Jan. 27 for a pre-trial conference.